Denis Fogarty says Aoife Wafer is "bursting to go" for her first appearance at the Rugby World Cup, but that the back row will only feature against New Zealand if she's ready.
The 22-year-old has missed Ireland’s opening two games of this World Cup due to knee surgery earlier this summer, and has been slowly reintroduced to training in the last week.
Ireland face the toughest challenge of this World Cup campaign so far on Sunday when they take on defending champions New Zealand in Brighton in a pool decider, with both sides guaranteed a quarter-final next week.
However, while Fogarty said Wafer (below) and Sam Monaghan are both "in contention" to play this weekend, he stopped short of saying whether the Six Nations player of the tournament would be named to face the Black Ferns.
"First and foremost for us is making sure, if people are fit and ready to play, we want to get them on the park," the scrum coach replied, when asked whether they would err on the side of caution with their selections, given Ireland have already qualified.
"Ultimately we’re going out to perform and actually win the game, that’s been the goal for us the whole time. I understand that there’s a quarter-final [next week] but the way we’ve been building and how we train, we’re fully focused on this game and making sure we’ve a performance in place to give us momentum going into a quarter-final.
"If everyone is available to play, we want to get them on the pitch."
The Ireland squad has their weekly "install session" at their training base at the University of Sussex today, although the light session was moved indoors due to some challenging weather conditions in Brighton, with rain and high winds on Wednesday morning.
Wafer joined the squad at the start of last week, having remained back in Dublin to work on her rehab, and while she has started to take on contact into her training, Fogarty (below) is hopeful she will take a full part in the sessions from tomorrow.
"She’s continued on her progression.
"She’s been doing it [full contact] previously, last week she was doing it in a controlled area. Tomorrow will be a push on from that, inside in a team environment.
"That will be the next step. We’re hopeful of everything going well for her and she’ll be in contention for the weekend.
"She’s bursting to go, if the game was today she’d want to play it! There’s a bit of controlling her and holding her back a bit. She’ll be ready and we have no doubts that when she gets onto the field she’ll be bulling to go.
"In her mind she’s ready to go, it’s exciting for her."
The Irish management are also keeping tabs on co-captain Monaghan (below), who departed Sunday’s win against Spain after just over 20 minutes following a crunching double tackle.
Fogarty wouldn’t confirm whether or not she would be risked against the Black Ferns on Sunday, but said they have no major concerns over the extent of the knock.
"We took her [off] as a precaution. She wasn’t moving well in the game when she took that knock.
"We had an install session today and everyone has taken part, getting through what our plan is for the week. At the moment everyone is in contention.
"When she took a knock from the tackle, she took a knock to the hip and wasn’t moving freely. It’s nothing major at all, she’s moving freely.
"Today she went through the install, it was nothing to her. We’re not worried about it," he added.
Incredibly, Ireland the only side in world rugby who have a winning record against the Black Ferns, leading their head to head series 2-1.
The second of those wins came last September, when Ireland pulled off the shock 29-17 victory at the WXV in Vancouver (below).
It was a result which stunned the rugby world, and Fogarty is confident that game will be fresh in the minds of the Black Fern players this Sunday in Brighton.
"It’s probably a natural thing that you're going to get a reaction. But we're expecting a huge physical battle, that's without a doubt.
"They've got incredible players and athletes all around the park so for us it is making sure that we're on it from both a setpiece point of view and a defensive point of view, because we're very aware of the threats they have around the field.
"It's getting our game right, making sure we're playing in the right areas of the park and not giving them easy entries, like what we probably did [to Spain] last week, so ensuring we don't do that.
"We've spoken about that, and putting things in place to ensure we don't do that," added Fogarty.
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